Business-to-business (B2B) marketing is exactly what it sounds like: a business promoting its products or services to other businesses rather than individual consumers.
For instance, a SaaS company offering a project management tool might target other companies who can use it to streamline their team’s workflows. At its core, B2B marketing is about creating valuable connections and delivering a unique value proposition tailored to business clients.
In this article, we’ll explore the ins and outs of B2B marketing, from its definition and techniques to best practices.
What Is B2B Marketing: Two Approaches
As part of your B2B marketing strategy, you’ll share successful case studies of businesses that have benefited from this product on your website or launch an email marketing campaign that offers actionable advice on how to use it effectively.
In either case, your company will demonstrate how your product or service works and persuade businesses why it’s a good fit for them. The idea is to capture a target company’s attention with well-curated marketing material and engage them until they think, “My team needs this tool.”
Modern-day B2B marketing focuses on two approaches:
1. Lead-based marketing: Lead-based marketing casts a wider net in targeting business prospects. It begins at the top of the marketing funnel, with the goal of capturing several leads quickly, regardless of whether they qualify as customers.
After sending marketing materials to this broad audience, a portion may trickle down the funnel. Ultimately, only a few of the initial leads will convert into paying customers.
For instance, a cloud services provider offers a whitepaper or an e-book aimed at IT decision-makers in exchange for their email addresses. With this simple exchange, the cloud services provider can build a list of qualified leads it can contact and send more targeted marketing materials.
2. Account-based marketing: Account-based B2B marketing focuses more on the relationship with each business customer. It takes a narrower approach, where the B2B company may pursue handpicked high-value accounts or companies to sell its product or service.
The company then builds a relationship with these companies, addressing their specific pain points and offering them personalized solutions. Here, the target customer is near the bottom of the marketing funnel and, therefore, closer to converting.
How Is B2B Marketing Different From B2C Marketing?
B2C is short for “business-to-consumer,” and B2C marketing targets individual customers.
Here are the major differences setting B2B and B2C marketing apart:
- Both marketing categories have unique brand strategies that resonate with their audience. For instance, B2B marketing techniques use formal data and persuasive case studies to show businesses why they should invest in a product. B2C marketing appeals more to customer emotions, which might explain why you bought those shoes after hearing your favorite influencer rave about them.
- The decision-making power rests with one individual in B2C marketing. For example, if you’re debating whether you need the latest smartphone (even if it isn’t that different from the previous model), you can only make that decision. In B2B, more than one person weighs in on purchase decisions. For example, IT engineers may lobby for an automated cybersecurity tool, or higher management will sign off on new sales software.
- Sales cycles differ in both cases. B2B sales cycles are generally longer, reflecting a more layered decision process subject to approval and inputs from multiple stakeholders.
Popular B2B Marketing Techniques
There are several ways to launch a B2B marketing campaign. Most B2B marketing techniques fall into two categories: inbound and outbound marketing.
Inbound Marketing: Inbound marketing is all about attracting leads by making yourself visible to your B2B prospects in the places where they frequent. You can do this by sharing helpful content your prospects may engage with, such as writing blog posts on your website or posting punchy yet informative posts on LinkedIn.
You may also take a more traditional approach, like setting up a booth at a conference to promote your products or services. This method brings prospects to your doorstep rather than you actively pursuing them.
Outbound marketing: Outbound marketing entails reaching out to prospects and capturing their attention through outreach emails, cold calling, or pitching prospects at trade events.
However, there are types of B2B marketing that straddle both inbound and outbound techniques. Let’s look at some of the most common:
Video Marketing
B2B businesses value hard data, but that doesn’t mean they only consider data presented through formal channels such as whitepapers or case studies. Informal video marketing channels like YouTube provide an excellent platform to build a personable online presence that appeals to B2B companies.
You can use this platform to break down complex concepts about your product or create explainer videos that show how it works in real-case scenarios, much like B2B giants Hubspot and Salesforce do. They heavily use YouTube marketing to promote their brand and create educational content. They create thought leader interviews, behind-the-scenes vlogs, and light-hearted tips and tricks videos, which help them land major B2B clients.
Email Marketing
If the stats are anything to go by, email marketing is one of the top channels generating revenue for B2B companies, with 59% of marketers vouching for its efficacy. Email marketing goes beyond cold outreach, which tends to be one-sided.
It’s like old-fashioned courting, where you gradually woo B2B companies with smart, promotional emails, regular newsletters that share valuable resources circling your product, and segmented emails that address business pain points.
With the right approach, companies can come to value your email offerings, helping you convert them from interested readers to buyers and, eventually, endorsers of your product or service.
B2B Blogs and SEO
B2B content marketing broadly includes blog, video, podcast, and email formats. Blog and article creation is a specific content marketing strategy that can help you build a steady relationship with your existing B2B customers while generating new leads.
A major part of this content strategy includes deciding what content to publish and where and when to publish it. You also need to ensure the content you publish is engaging and connects with your B2B audiences by resolving a common problem they face.
Your B2B prospects should also be able to find your content easily. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) can help. With the right SEO strategy, your content can appear on the first page of search engines, becoming more visible to your B2B prospects.
Additionally, you can aim for social media content marketing, which involves sharing valuable resources and articles on social media channels like LinkedIn, where your B2B prospects hang out. When done right, evergreen content can yield results years after you’ve published it, giving you a consistent B2B leads pipeline.
B2B Event Marketing
Let’s not dismiss this traditional B2B marketing technique, which may seem daunting initially but can get you results if done well. Event marketing involves planning or attending an event to showcase and promote your product to companies.
For example, you may participate in a virtual summit or organize a webinar for several high-value B2B companies. It may also involve in-person events such as trade shows and conferences where you reserve a stall to attract leads. Some B2B marketers host VIP dinners to pitch their products to C-suite prospects in a less austere setting.
All these offer a fantastic platform to position your brand in front of key B2B players.
B2B Referral Marketing
Nothing beats organic referrals, but let’s face it — you can’t base your revenue or lead gen plan purely on this strategy. That’s why referral marketing is a good one as far as strategies go.
Think about it. With a B2B referral program, you only need to offer your existing B2B clients an incentive to refer or promote your product to other businesses. It’s a two-way marketing street that benefits both parties. Your B2B clients earn a commission while you get a list of verified leads.
And this isn’t just marketing hearsay. The Harvard Business Review confirms that peer recommendations influence up to 90% of B2B purchasing decisions. You can build such referral partnerships through an official affiliate program or carry them out more discreetly, as some B2B brands do.
For example, the project management tool Asana has an affiliate program that promotes B2B referrals. Companies can enroll in this program to become Asana affiliates and earn commissions by referring clients.
B2B Paid Advertising
Many B2B companies use paid ad campaigns such as pay-per-click Facebook ads (performance marketing) or classic billboard ads to target their B2B clients. B2B ad campaigns can be hard to get right. Given their high cost, they should be well-planned before implementation.
Here are some things to keep in mind before doing B2B paid ads:
- Get your target audience right. Be acutely aware of the kind of B2B audiences you’re hoping to attract.
- Conduct solid research on the type of ad creative, channel, or message your target audience might connect with the most. You can plan formal ads at webinars and marketing events or advertise on Google or LinkedIn.
- Segment your B2B ads based on the buyer journey stage your audience is in.
B2B Podcasting
Podcasts have suddenly become a part of our lives, including those of B2B marketers, who are now using them to build a broad audience that can be funneled into conversions. B2B podcasts are an excellent way to talk about your product. But more than that, they offer the opportunity to position your brand as an expert and yourself as a thought leader.
Through podcasting, you can give your B2B business a strong voice and share it directly with your target audience, boosting credibility and brand awareness all at once with minimal effort.
B2B Public Relations
In the broader B2B marketing strategy, PR complements lead generation, brand awareness and content marketing efforts. By establishing credibility and positive perception, B2B PR can make other marketing initiatives—such as digital ads, email campaigns and sales outreach—more effective, as prospects are more likely to engage with a reputable, trusted brand.
Some common B2B PR strategies and tactics include:
- Media Relations
- Press Releases
- Industry-Specific Media Outreach
- Influencer and Analyst Relations
Best B2B Marketing Examples
Here are two good examples of B2B marketing that use some of the marketing techniques discussed above:
Canva
Constantly highlighting all the fantastic things your product can do is an effective way to win over the hearts of your B2B audiences. Canva does this well with its Canva Events initiative, an online program that features a host of webinars, free courses, workshops, Q&A sessions, and more.
These resources show how your business can use Canva’s tools and features to create amazing graphics, impactful presentations, and video ads. It also has an exclusive “Canva for Teams” workshop for corporate businesses considering incorporating Canva into their projects.
The incredible part is that Canva captures the attention of B2B players not just by offering these resources but by making them free and accessible with just the click of a button.
Monday.com
Monday.com, the well-known online project management platform, took its marketing offline, all the way to the London tube, with its hilarious transit advertising campaign. The ad mocked London’s erstwhile premier’s efforts on the failed Garden Bridge project.
The ad poster carried a clever snapshot of its app in which it imagined the premier crossing off several tasks related to the bridge’s construction from his list, which, sadly, never came to be.
Monday.com cleverly took a sticky political situation in London at the time to showcase its product with a relevant and funny hook. While the ad was creative, its placement in the tube, which its target audience uses to commute to work, grabbed all the right eyeballs.
Best Practices in B2B Marketing
Successful B2B marketing is the result of several factors at play. Here’s how you can influence some of those factors by following these best practices for a higher return on investment (ROI).
Develop a Deep Understanding of Your Target Audience:
Know your B2B audience. Find out where they hang out, both online and offline (Hint: it’s not just LinkedIn). Get to know them and their pain points, identify their key decision-makers, and create a buyer persona.
A buyer persona describes your target B2B audience with specifics such as age, behavior, aspirations, and beliefs, creating a fictional character who represents this audience.
You can also use social listening data from communities such as Twitter, Reddit, or Google Trends to better understand what your target B2B players are saying about other similar products or your own.
Walk the Talk by Delivering Real Value:
The best kind of B2B marketing delivers authentic value to businesses. This value transcends the product or service itself. It teaches businesses something and shows how it can solve their problems. It may also highlight aspects that your B2B prospects expect from a product or service, such as brand reputation, customer service, and sustainability.
Suppose your research reveals that several B2B players in the tech space struggle to get a certain process up and running. You can create a blog or whitepaper focusing on this gripe, detailing how your product can solve it.
Make this resource widely available to your B2B audience, making them see you as a strategic partner rather than a pushy salesperson. Once businesses see you as a partner with valuable inputs, they are more likely to buy from you.
Don’t Underestimate the Power of a Good CTA:
Marketing can serve as a guiding light, directing your customers on what to do. That’s why a strong call to action (CTA) is vital to any B2B marketing strategy.
It puts decision-makers in the driver’s seat and compels them to act. This “action” could be anything that moves them one step closer to considering your product, whether by filling out a form or clicking a link. All your marketing material must include a clear, relevant, and compelling call to action (CTA) that furthers your campaign’s messaging.
Instead of having your CTA sound like a low-key order, phrase it in a way that suggests a clear benefit. For example, instead of saying “Click Here Now” or “Register for our Webinar Today,” you might say “Get Instant Access,” “Claim Your Spot,” or “Get Exclusive Access Today.”
These CTAs make the prospect of clicking a button more tempting while implying a hidden benefit that your B2B audience must click to discover.
Use Visual Content to Your Advantage:
B2B audiences respond better to well-researched whitepapers and strong case studies, but they don’t have to be boring. Remember, there are actual human minds behind a B2B company, and they don’t want to see another text-heavy whitepaper or blog that waxes eloquent about a product.
It takes only a few tweaks to transform your marketing material into a visually stunning document that your B2B audiences will love reading. You can add a range of visual cues, including infographics, videos, evocative images, or even GIFs, to lighten the tone of a marketing document without diluting its heart and soul, aka data.
Create a Strong Brand Persona:
Businesses value consistency. It makes them more trusting and confident in your product, transforming them into loyal customers over time. That’s why it’s important to create a bold, unwavering brand persona that reflects certain values, a distinct tone of voice, and a strong visual identity. You can do this by consistently creating awareness around your brand through these steps:
- Using storytelling tactics to create a brand narrative, as Cisco did in its “Never Better” campaign. It positioned them (and technology) as “a force for good in the world.”
- Using solid messaging tactics like Slack, which highlights a clear and matter-of-fact ROI for its product
- Not gatekeeping value-based resources and genuinely caring about helping businesses grow, such as what Hubspot does with its educational podcasts and free courses
- Articulating a clear and unique value proposition that impresses B2B clients. For example, Evernote has amazing clarity on the market it’s catering to with its note-making app, i.e., busy professionals and teams who need help staying organized.
Engage an Expert Agency to Help With Your B2B Marketing Efforts
With the face of B2B marketing changing year after year, you need more than tactics to get your B2B strategy right. Fall into step with evolving B2B marketing trends by relying on a trusted partner like Channel V Media, who can do the heavy lifting for you.
We are an award-winning marketing agency specializing in a range of communications and PR solutions, from developing integrated communications to crafting creative B2B marketing strategies. Talk to us today to find out how our industry expertise can help your business succeed.